DEVELOPMENT OF ULTRA-LOW POWER DEICER FOR CIVIL ENGINEERING APPLICATIONS

Abstract

Ice and snow accumulation on engineering structures, such as buildings, bridges, roads, power transmission lines, and communication and refrigeration equipment, presents serious problems. Over several decades, numerous deicing and anti-icing technologies have been invented, developed, and used. The important factors of merit of the deicing technologies are the energy and power requirements, clean removal of ice and snow from protected surfaces, safety, reliability, and cost of manufacturing and operations. The improvement of existing de- and anti-icing technologies is still in progress. We consider our research to be a valuable contribution to this field. This manuscript presents the development and design of an ultra-low-power electro-impulsive deicer for civil engineering. To drastically decrease the energy consumption of the EID, we combined the results of recent advances in low ice adhesion materials with advanced EID analytical theory and computer simulation. The result is an energy requirement 100 times less than that of the pulse electrothermal deicer (PETD) and 1000 times less than that of traditional thermal de-icing (TD). This manuscript presents simple and accurate algorithms for EID design and optimization, and the results of experimental testing of EID made of materials known for their low adhesion to ice. The improved EID technology can be applied to the deicing of buildings, bridges, airplanes, evaporators of refrigerators, harvesting of ice in residential, commercial, and industrial icemakers, and in deicing communication equipment such as antennas and radars.